Dry black powder contaminant poses an operational risk with respect to pipelines. Particles of dry black powder become entrained in the gas and should be removed to maintain pipeline and instrument integrity. Black powder is a mixture of pipeline corrosion products consisting of iron oxides, iron sulfides, iron carbonates, and other solid contaminant. When solid contaminant, such as black powder, reaches a sufficiently high concentration, the devices that use the hydrocarbon gas may be adversely affected. Black powder will plug power plant fuel injection nozzles and furnace burner tips causing equipment damage and potentially an increase in the plant's environmentally regulated emissions.
A number of pipeline contaminant monitoring devices have been developed and tested. Most have had operational issues, due to contaminant build up or scaling on measurement sensors. For example, PECOFacet's PlantGard™ laser particle counting contaminant monitor uses a sapphire laser optical tube to keep sampled gas separated from electrical laser components. Laser light is beamed through the optical tube to reach the gas stream and the particles carried within. When sampling dry solid particulate, a static build up will occur on non-conductive laser optical structures and lens. The static charge that builds up will attract dry solid particles and cause them to stick to optical surfaces. Once optical surfaces build up with solids, laser light is deflected creating false positive particle counts inflating particle count values. Most contaminant sensing devices will suffer from this issue or other like contaminant coating problems.
Embodiments of the invention provide a contaminant monitoring system that addresses the problems described above. These and other advantages of the invention, along with additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.